


Hamilhaunted

by feverbeats



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: "It's too bad I'm dead. I had a lot of money riding on you and Dolley sleeping in separate beds."





	

"Hey. You in there?"

James jerks around. Thomas is standing slightly to his left, his permanently amused expression in place.

"What?" James says. He hasn't slept right in weeks. Sitting and doing government work is a chore now. He's in a daze.

Thomas frowns. "James. Where have you _been_ lately? I need you focused."

The ghost of a whisper in James's ear says, _Yeah, to do his work for him, Madison. It's what you're there for._ He ignores it.

"I'm just sick," he says. It's a convenient excuse for getting out of almost anything, and it's usually true. But usually physical illnesses doesn't dull his mind, and this has. It's an inordinate amount of stress, and worse, he doesn't know for completely certain that it's really happening. If he's going mad—but he has no family history, nothing like that. This is an anomaly.

Thomas lays his hand on James's arm. "You've been really quiet since he died."

Wrong. After Hamilton died, James wasn't quiet. He cried, even in cabinet meetings, but it didn't matter. He wasn't the only one. He only got quiet a few months later, when the problem started.

"I miss him," he says. Lying to Thomas is not something he makes a habit of, except to protect him, but he has to work this situation through before he tells the truth. Anything else would be rash. An error.

Thomas surprises him by saying, "Yeah, me too." Off James's look, he says, "Well, nobody wanted it to go down like that."

Nobody except one person. One person who still hasn't gone to trial and is still, despite everyone's complaints, vice president. James feels sick when he thinks about it. "Mm," he says pointedly.

"Yeah," Thomas says. "Yeah, I know."

James expects a sarcastic comment, a joke, _something_. Instead, Thomas shrugs and goes back to discussing his land purchase with a Congressman.

"This presidency has really aged him, huh?"

James wheels around, breathing fast. There's nobody there, but he knows. "Go away!" he hisses. "Not here, not in _public_."

But Hamilton just laughs at him.

*

_It's better now than when it started. The first time, James is sitting in the park when he hears a noise almost like a wounded animal._

_Alexander Hamilton is kneeling on the grass, bleeding and screaming. His coat is torn and blood seeps between his fingers as they clutch at a wound. There are other people around, but none of them turns around. Hamilton locks eyes with James, still screaming._

_Fascinated, James comes closer. _Hamilton_. Hamilton as he'd been when he'd died. The gray at the temples, the little spectacles._

_"But Burr killed you," James whispers._

_And Hamilton disappears._

James had told himself he was going crazy, but even then it had been too real for him to really believe it.

Since then, the ghost has appeared to be fine, apart from a bloodstain on his coat. James can't forget the screams, though.

*

"It's too bad I'm dead. I had a lot of money riding on you and Dolley sleeping in separate beds."

It's been a month now that James hasn't had an uninterrupted night's sleep, and for him, that's a problem. "I'm very ill," he says stiffly. "Please go away."

Hamilton is still invisible, but James can _feel_ him there. He waits for Hamilton to say something, or to leave, or to appear, but nothing happens.

"Ha," Hamilton says quietly after a minute.

James ignores him.

"So—" Hamilton starts, at the same time James says, "Who bet against you?"

Hamilton laughs. "Knew you weren't asleep."

James sits up on his elbows. His whole body aches and he's exhausted. "Who?"

Hamilton is now faintly visible, sitting on the edge of the bed. There's no indentation in the covers, but his hand idly traces the print of the quilt. "A bunch of us. Your little pal Monroe. Jefferson wouldn't bet money, but he backed you up. Oh, and Burr."

And just as abruptly as he'd come, Hamilton is gone, as if he'd never been there.

James frowns. Hamilton doesn't usually vanish in the middle of an interesting conversation, and certainly not something that could make James suffer.

He still can't sleep. All he can think about is the early days, before Thomas came back from France. He and Hamilton were friends, then. He used to tell himself they stopped because Hamilton was too extreme, and Hamilton tells everyone else they stopped because James does anything Thomas says. Well. They could both be right.

The next day, he can't get out of bed until noon. He's so ill and exhausted that he feels like the one who's a ghost. He takes a carriage to the library and reads up on ghosts. It's nothing useful, of course. Accounts of hauntings that barely make an attempt to be believable. A few stories of how to get rid of ghosts, but nothing he hasn't already tried. And it's not as if he hasn't asked Hamilton. That was what he tried first. But Hamilton has been oddly uncommunicative about that particular detail.

He looks up and sees Hamilton sitting at a table in the back of the room, reading. It doesn't look as if he's even noticed James. It leaves James with a lump in his throat, Hamilton sitting there alone and dead, reading.

He leaves the books on the shelves and goes to the office. This is going to kill him if it keeps up.

*

Once a month or so, when neither of them is too busy or too stressed, James goes home with Thomas. He's given up wondering if this is something Thomas will outgrow. It's the other way around: he's grown into it, taking it more and more seriously as he gets older. James has not stopped being grateful.

"I knew it. Too bad nobody would bet against me on this one."

James jerks away from Thomas. Hamilton is leaning on Thomas's dresser, arms crossed. Even the stupid permanent bloodstain on his coat is infuriating, right now.

"James? What's up?" Thomas's hair is tangled and his eyes are dark. He looks so undone. James has a sudden and perhaps irrational urge to protect him from Hamilton.

"I—I don't feel well," James says. He's said that before, in bed with Thomas. Today, though, he wants this so much. But not quite enough to make him irrational.

Thomas, to his credit, doesn't even sigh. He just says, "You need anything?"

"Tea," James suggests weakly.

*

Hamilton's only been dead three months, and Thomas will still hardly look at Burr. Nobody will. It's starting to become clear that he won't go to trial, and James wonders if that's why Hamilton is haunting him. Well, why him, then? It's not as if he wants Burr to get off the hook. He'd happily see Burr jailed or hanged. It's just not his call.

Hamilton is at work with him today. He's sitting on the desk next to James, leafing through his papers. How does it look to other people, James wonders. Are the papers moving? His logical mind can't make sense of it.

He looks up and sees Burr watching him from across the table, eyes narrowed, and has a horrible, jarring sensation that Burr can see Hamilton. That would almost be a relief. It would be fair, anyway. Burr's the one who killed him. Burr's the one who did a number of other things to him, if the rumors are to be believed. (James doesn't put any stock in rumors.)

Burr lets himself out of the meeting early, which he's been doing a lot lately. James thinks he's probably going to get drunk, or that he really has given up on government. Thomas has been uncharacteristically silent on what he thinks it might be.

Hamilton spends the meeting taking James's quill and writing on his papers, correcting things he thinks need correcting. The final document is a mess of ink in Hamilton's scrawl.

 _What are you doing?_ James writes at the bottom of one page, underlining _doing_ half a dozen times. It's better than talking to Hamilton out loud.

"Would you rather I contributed?" Hamilton asks. Nobody else looks at him, of course. "Because I could share what I think of Jefferson's expansion bullshit."

 _Do you know what Burr's up to?_ James writes, suddenly getting an idea. If Hamilton's a ghost, maybe he can--

But Hamilton is gone. He disappeared as soon as Burr's name left James's mouth.

James tries to keep it together for the rest of the meeting. He know he must look sick because of how Thomas is looking at him. When the meeting ends, he forces himself to stay seated for a few beats. He takes two deep breaths. Then he lifts one of the papers with shaking fingers. He should show Thomas. Thomas would understand.

Instead, he ducks out the back door after Burr.

Burr is leaning on the wall outside, face in hands.

"Burr," James says sharply. He hadn't expected this.

Burr's head jerks up, and his face is wet. He looks how James feels.

"What?" he snaps. "Jefferson needs something else and he had to send his dog?"

That stings, but James is used to it. "Do you really think you have right to be out here crying?"

He thinks for a second Burr is going to hit him, which would be bad.

Instead, Burr hits the wall. While he's swearing and shaking his hand out, James realizes that Hamilton is back. He's standing next to James, watching Burr intently. James hardly dares to breathe.

Abruptly, James shoves the heavily annotated paper at Burr. "Read this."

Burr reads, and Hamilton reads over his shoulder. There's a fraction of an inch between them.

"This is his writing," Burr says blankly. "When is this from?"

It's not really a question. James's proposal is the one they were discussing today. At least this answers the question of whether James is crazy.

"I don't understand," Burr says.

Hamilton is watching Burr's face like a cat about to pounce.

"He's been following me," James says quietly.

He's not superstitious, and he'd never believe someone telling him this, but Burr . . . Burr would. He goes pale and whips around.

"Madison," he hisses, "I swear to Christ I'll kill you if you're lying."

"You know I'm not." James tries to keep his voice level. "He's here right now. Watching you. Can't you feel it?"

Burr's face empties of feeling. "No," he says. "I can't feel anything."

"Tell him," Hamilton snaps. "Tell him, Madison. Make him believe it."

James has the horrible feeling he's about to witness a death. The wind is up, and Burr's hands are shaking. He reminds himself that Burr deserves it.

"He wants me to make you believe it," James says quickly. "I have other papers. Weeks' worth. And he keeps disappearing when I say your name. Probably because you're the one who--"

"Or avoidance. Avoidance is his middle name," Burr mutters. He sounds somewhere between fond and furious. Closer to furious. He glances at the leaves blowing around his ankles. "I believe you. I can feel—I believe you. So what? What next? What's done is done."

"Hamilton, what do you _want_?" James asks.

Hamilton doesn't look away from Burr. "I wanted him to believe you."

Burr jerks away from Hamilton. "Fuck!"

"You can see him," James says, shaken. "I—don't kill him, Hamilton." _Not in front of me, anyway._

"I don't want to kill him," Hamilton says. He sounds irritated. "I just want to talk to him."

Burr is shaking. His fists are clenched. Hamilton seems almost to be enjoying himself.

Burr doesn't ask how Hamilton is here. He doesn't ask about the wound above Hamilton's hip that is now freely bleeding all over the pavement.

"Fuck you," he says. "How dare you come back here and--"

"What are you really mad about, Burr?" Hamilton snaps. "You got everything you wanted."

Burr starts shouting at him and James backs away. He feels, for a moment, as if he's a child again and his parents are fighting. They rarely did, but when they did, he was always struck to the core with fear. He feels that way now, as if he's trespassing on something horribly intimate that has nothing to do with him.

The back door opens again, and Thomas is standing there. He glances at Burr, who is still shouting. Hamilton is shouting over him.

"Um," James says.

Thomas looks away from Burr. "I don't know what _that's_ about, but come back inside. You'll catch your death."

James follows, numbly. Thomas didn't see. He tries a few half-hearted explanations, but Thomas brushes them off. They have tea.

And that's—it, really. James catches glimpses of Hamilton's handwriting on Burr's papers now and then. Burr is tight-lipped about it, but he stops leaving meetings early. Whatever they've worked out between themselves, it must be convincing. James can't imagine anything Burr could say to earn _his_ forgiveness, but Burr's not trying. The whole thing is, ultimately, not James's business.

Which is frustrating, but he understands. He has his own territory that needs taking care of. Thomas, not a superstitious man, writes the whole thing off as Burr being unhinged, as usual. James, always one to err on the side of caution, doesn't argue.

And maybe he'll never know why Hamilton chose him, or was chosen for him. But James is a person who gets things done, and at the end of the day, maybe that's all the reason Hamilton needed.


End file.
